Beach Blanket Zombie. Mark McLaughlin
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A pale creature with infected green fingernails he was, and yet there was something utterly genteel about the way he nibbled at the dead rat. I was determined to save him from himself.
“Good Mr. Social Worker,” he whispered, “your services are not required here. I pray you leave me be. I am expecting old acquaintances...very old! I asked them to visit many years ago—a terrible mistake—and they do insist on returning every now and then.”
“You need help, my friend.” I smiled and patted his bald head. “The department will take care of you. We’ll put the color back in your cheeks.”
“Yes...but which color?” The old man wrapped what remained of his dinner in a sheet of green waxed paper. “You must have other appointments to keep. My guests shall be arriving at any moment. I cannot imagine that time has mellowed their dispositions.” He shuffled over to a cupboard and placed the tidbit in a stack with several other small green bundles.
A single faint knock sounded at the door. Can a sound have a chromatic quality? A tint? Certainly that soft, soft knock was coated with a sickly green patina.
“Hellfire!” the old man whispered. “Under the bed with you, young fellow. It would not do for my guests to find you here.” So saying, he pushed me to the floor—his strength was inhuman!—and rolled me into the suggested hiding place. Then he threw open the door and in they swarmed.
Green was the color of their desiccated flesh and glowing eyes. Green was the mold that grew in huge swirls and splotches on their tattered garments. Their throats, clotted with green dust, coughed forth a mad litany of vicious truths and delicious lies for hours on end. Listening, I learned that these singular individuals had discovered a magical means of turning death back into life...
A greenish sort of life.
In time, one of the dusty guests (his name was Mr. Crowley) brought forth a piece of green chalk and etched the outline of a door on the wall. He made a series of gestures and a portal of green fire appeared, through which the guests passed, dragging the old man. Then the portal vanished and I was alone.
I left the old man’s ramshackle house, my eyes brimming with tears—green tears, because of all that dust. My hands and clothes were streaked with the hideous stuff.
Churning green clouds rolled across the sky as I drove through the city. A growing stench filled the air—a nauseating green reek. I had stopped at the store before visiting the old man, and so sacks of produce and packaged meat rested on the seat next to me. The contents of these bags had decomposed into a thick green slime. I rolled down the window and flung the sacks from the car.
Green concrete towers loomed before me like lichen-shrouded monoliths. The flesh of the people on the sidewalks putrefied before my eyes, taking on a horrid green cast. The other drivers I glimpsed bared their decayed green teeth at me.
Suddenly, there was a furious crash of metal. My head snapped forward and back—bones cracked in my neck. I had collided with a dark green car driven by a smiling green thing in a dusty shroud.
Green mist clouded my vision. Needles of green pain danced in my brain. I stumbled from the car and my legs gave way beneath me.
In a moment, Mr. Crowley began to trace around my body with a stub of green chalk.
Three Cheers for the Dead, Bite And Chew
Brytni was sipping her low-fat, sugar-free, cherry-mocha-flavored latte, chatting about boys and clothes and shoes with Ashlee, who had ordered a chai tea sweetened with organic honey, when the commercial came on.
“Bring out your dead and get out the vote!” bellowed a phlegmy male voice.
The patrons of the Hallowed Grounds Coffee House looked up, and most performed simultaneous spit-takes of surprise in response to what they saw on the TV screen above and to the left of the cash register.
The pus-yellow eyes of the man on TV competed with his bruise-purple skin and feces-brown teeth for the title of Most Disgusting Color Ever Found On A Supposedly Human Face. They all lost out to the slime-green streams trickling down from his flared nostrils.
“Like, is that a zombie or what?” Ashlee cried.
“Good evening, fellow Americans!” intoned the grinning cadaver. “My name is Telemachus Vuurmek, and I am running for president of the United States.”
“Can a zombie even run for president?” Brytni wondered aloud.
“A lot of you are probably wondering if a zombie can even run for president,” Telemachus gurgled. “The answer is: Yes. I was born in America and I am certainly old enough. The laws do not require any candidate to have a heartbeat. I sincerely hope none of you will discriminate against me, just because I am pulse-impaired.”
“He has a point,” Ashlee said. “We can’t hate him because he’s, like, different.”
“But what does he stand for?” Brytni asked.
“You’re no doubt asking, ‘Where does a zombie stand for?’” rumbled the campaigning corpse. “I am the only candidate willing to speak out about equal rights for the dead. Zombies are up-and-coming members of the community, as many of you will learn before this night is through.”
“What do you suppose that means?” Ashlee said.
“It probably means he’s not the only zombie in the world,” Brytni surmised.
“I’m sure many of you have surmised that I am not the only zombie on Earth,” Telemachus croaked. “My living campaign planners ... the Resurrectionist Party ... summoned me from beyond the grave to run for office, and they’ve been traveling the highways and byways, raising supporters in every major city. Once my newly risen supporters put the bite on you, you’ll be joining the party, too!”
“Like, I don’t get what he’s saying!” Ashlee whined. Outside the coffee house, prolonged screams echoed in the distance.
Brytni’s eyes brimmed with tears as she said, “It sounds like our country is filling with the shambling bodies of the hungry dead, rampaging for living flesh upon which to feast, and once we are bitten, we too shall become ravenous zombies, prowling the blood-spattered streets, creating more and more zombies with our infectious bites, until at last the Earth has become a spinning, planet-wide graveyard of agony and doom.”
Up on the screen, Telemachus Vuurmek smiled and nodded. “Yeah. What she said.”
Tears of the Expressionist Aphrodite
(Selected Passages From A Transcript Of The Documentary)
The Poet
I hate being called a poet. I’ve met too many people who think all a poet is good for is coming up with clever rhymes. I prefer to think of myself as a text-orchestrator. And as for rhyme: it’s only useful when you are trying to replicate the brain-wave patterns of deceased idiots. And there are other psionic applications. Orgasmic waves, for example, break down roughly into sestinas. But a poem that could drum the rhythm of life into the dead: or better yet, that could inspire the dead to fuck! That would be something.
The Painter
I’ve been criticized for going on and on about pain and suffering. And having said that, I shall proceed to talk about pain and suffering anyway, since I know whereof I speak. They put my father behind bars for what he did, but really, he should have received an arts grant. Slamming that car door on my hands—first one, then other—was a genius thing to do. Really. I was pissed off at the time, but now: the pain, it’s all right there on the canvas. The color theory of pain, the geometry of pain... My hands may not be the prettiest things in the world, but they get the job done.
The Boywhore
Yes, I used to fuck for money, but I’m beyond that now. I once thought that being hypersensitive was a curse, but with life experience, I’ve gained confidence. If only everyone were hypersensitive! That would be nice. A world of